Mark grabbed me by the shirt and dragged me onto the front lawn where we struggled. He shouted, “Get your ass away from my house, you fool! And don’t you ever come back over here disrespecting my home and my wife.”
“Mark! Stop it.”
I could’ve knocked Mark’s ass out, but he was right. I was acting a fool, and Ruby didn’t even appear to be there. I started to walk away, but Shauntay wasn’t finished with me. After ushering Mark towards the door, she said, “I’ll deal with this, Mark.”
“Shauntay, he can either calm down or get in his car and leave. This is flat out ridiculous. Our damn neighbors are going to think we’re crazy all because of him,” Mark said, as he stood in the doorway, looking like he was ready to pounce if I yelled again.
“It’s fine, he’s calmed down, right Ronan?” Shauntay asked me.
“Yeah.”
Mark shot me a look which should have killed me dead if that sort of thing were real, but he stayed inside the doorway. Shauntay walked barefoot across the lawn and joined me near my car. A few of their neighbors were looking at us from behind the blinds across the way.
“Way to cause a scene,” said Shauntay.
“She’s left me,” I said, rage brewing in my chest. It was hard to keep that rage from traveling to my eyes and rolling down my cheeks. “Has she called you?”
“No, it sounds like she made a snap decision. Did anything happen between you two that would cause that?”
“It must’ve been a snap decision for her to run off with her other man. If I had an affair, it was only because she had one first!” I admitted, looking Shauntay in the eye as if I were confronting Ruby herself.
“You make me sick!” Shauntay said before hauling off and slapping my jaw to a tight clasp. “She told me all about you staying out late, going off to bars and coming home at all hours of the morning reeking of women’s fragrance and sex. You have no idea what your wife has been going through over the past three months. You don’t know the lengths she’s gone through to keep you happy.”
“Well, that’s just it. I’m not happy.”
“So you thought you’d just go out and have an affair? Who was it?” she asked before blowing air into the wind. “No, let me guess. That girl that’s been filling in for your secretary? Ruby might not have caught it, but I saw the way your slick ass looked at her at the company party. I saw the desire dance back and forth between you two.”
If my attraction to Misty had been so evident that Shauntay picked up on it, I wondered who else might have caught it. Was that the reason my Ruby was being so distant?
“You men are so predictable,” said Shauntay breaking into my thoughts. “I should’ve warned Ruby to check that hoe out, but it wasn’t my place to say. The messenger always gets shot.”
“She wouldn’t touch me,” I said, finally airing the extent of our dirty laundry. I was vexed and tired of being looked at as the bad guy. “She is the one who sent me out of the house, encouraging me to go hang out in the evening. She wanted me to do anything, so she wouldn’t have to be intimate with me.”
“You really are a stupid fool,” Shauntay said while shaking her head. Tears formed in her eyes as she continued. “I promised Ruby I wouldn’t tell you her secret, and I’m still not sure that I should.”
“I knew it. She is having an affair!” I said certain the news Shauntay was about to give me would rip my world apart.
“There is no affair, Ronan.”
“Then what is it?”
“She was diagnosed with cancer.”
The air became thin. I struggled to get enough oxygen into my lungs.
This had to be some kind of joke.
“Ruby would have told me if she had cancer. We talk about everything…” I said as my voice began to fade and stories that she told me about her mother came to mind.
The symptoms Ruby had been showing over the past months permeated my brain.
She started wearing wigs again.
She was tired and slept most of the day.
She had upped the amount of time the kids spent with Shauntay.
She had withdrawn from having sex.
All of which I thought she’d done because she had a new man.
Shauntay crossed her arms across her chest. “It’s hard for Ruby to talk to you about it. She cried on my shoulder many a times and I begged her to tell you. But when she was a child her father left her mother for another woman, when he found out she had cancer.”
“But, I never would leave Ruby because she’s sick.”
“Yet, you screwed another woman and then came home and laid beside her every night, not knowing she was fighting for her life.”
“That’s low, Shauntay. Ruby’s been lying to me. She didn’t trust me.”
“Should she have,” Shauntay said. “That horrifying feeling she had when her father walked out on her sick and dying mother never left her. That’s why she didn’t want to tell you she was sick. She watched her parents fall apart and get divorced because of a health scare, and she didn’t want the same thing to happen to you two. But it looks like it happened, after all.”
“I don’t believe what I’m hearing. Are you telling me that my wife has cancer?” I asked feeling incapable of processing the information being relayed to me.
“Yes, Ronan, and I’ve already told you too much, so you need to talk to Ruby now. What I can say with one hundred percent certainty is that she’s not, and never has, cheated on you.”
Fear ripped through my heart. My wife had been fighting cancer, while I was being seduced by another woman. What’s worse was I didn’t recognize any signs that Ruby needed me as deeply as she did.
My hands began to shake uncontrollably as I tried to get my keys from my pocket so I could leave. With one hand on the door knob and my eyes to the sky, I managed to ask, “Is she going to be okay, Shauntay?”
“It was a big scare. She suffered with extreme exhaustion for a while, but I believe she’s going to be alright.”
“Thanks, Shauntay.”
“You’re welcome. And Ronan, the reason she didn’t want you to touch her was because she felt undesirable. As wrong as it was for her to not tell you about her condition, you sleeping with someone else is inexcusable. I wish she did have another man! It’s obvious she deserves more than you are capable of giving,” Shauntay said as she fixed her stern gaze on me. She rolled her eyes, turned away from me and stormed back up the walkway to her house abandoning me with my feelings of shame.
I drove off briskly with an invisible cloud over my head. Their nosey neighbors were out on their lawn watching me spin away. And I drove away fast, almost comatose with the stress of it all. Staring out at the road without really seeing it, I almost hit a stray animal. I swerved around it and regained my senses for the drive home. To an empty home.
I didn’t get much sleep that night. Instead, I just dosed on the couch drifting in and out, periodically checking my cell phone for any communication from Ruby. With every minute of the night, my angst grew.
I couldn’t sleep, so I searched through Ruby’s personal things. I went from drawer to drawer throwing out garments. I didn’t care where they landed. I needed proof, something tangible, anything to confirm what Shauntay said was a fact.
I kneeled down on Ruby’s side of the bed and saw a security lock box. I didn’t have the key, but I didn’t let that deter me. I bounded down the stairs two at a time and entered the kitchen to get the biggest and strongest knife I could find.
It wasn’t long before I had the lock box pried open. It was filled with medical bills that had been paid in cash, all addressed to Ruby. I scanned each letter and saw the type of surgery she had, radiation treatment and its cost. Everything was outlined in black and white.
The medical bills fell from my hands, like the rage from my heart.
“My God, I’ve ruined the best thing that ever happened to me!” My voice boomed through the empty house.
I sat there on the floor amidst my
own pain, a broken man who destroyed everything that I held dear. I made a mess of our lives, and I had to fix it.
TO BE CONTINUED IN THE SECOND INSTALLMENT OF
“TO THE WOMAN HE LOVES.”
To The Woman He Loves Page 15
